The word “mild” does a lot of damage in these cases. It appears on the discharge paperwork, the adjuster repeats it back to you, and six weeks later you are still losing words mid-sentence and cannot tolerate a grocery store. Mild describes how the injury looked on arrival at the emergency room. It says nothing about how the next year of your life will go. Attorney Dustin handles head injury claims across southwest Riverside County, and the concussion files are consistently the ones where the medical reality and the insurance file diverge most sharply.
What counts as a mild traumatic brain injury?
A mild traumatic brain injury, or mTBI, is the clinical term for a concussion. The definition used by the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine turns on three markers: a Glasgow Coma Scale score of 13 to 15 on arrival, any loss of consciousness lasting under 30 minutes, and post-traumatic amnesia of less than 24 hours.
Notice what is absent from that list. You do not have to black out, and most people with concussions never do. You do not have to hit your head on anything. A whiplash mechanism that snaps the head forward and back can shear axons inside the skull without your scalp ever touching the steering wheel. Feeling dazed, foggy, or “off” at the scene is enough to put a concussion on the table.
Why did my CT scan come back normal if I have a concussion?
Because a CT scan is looking for something else. Head CT in the emergency department screens for bleeding, skull fracture, and swelling that would require surgery in the next few hours. It is not designed to detect the diffuse microscopic injury to nerve fibers that produces concussion symptoms, and in mild TBI it is usually normal.
That normal scan then becomes the centerpiece of the defense. Expect an adjuster to quote it. The clinical answer is that concussion is diagnosed on symptoms and examination, not imaging. Where objective support is needed, it typically comes from neuropsychological testing, a formal battery measuring memory, processing speed, and attention against population norms, or from a neuro-optometric exam documenting convergence insufficiency and other oculomotor deficits.
How long do concussion symptoms usually last?
Most people improve within a few weeks to three months. The CDC identifies roughly that three-month mark as the point where lingering symptoms are recognized as persistent post-concussive symptoms rather than an ordinary recovery curve.
Symptoms that tend to outlast the rest, in my experience with these files:
- Cognitive fatigue, meaning you function fine for two hours and then cannot function at all
- Light and noise sensitivity that makes open offices and classrooms unworkable
- Irritability and emotional lability, which family members usually notice before the client does
- Headaches with a cervical component, often mistaken for the neck injury alone
- Vestibular symptoms and visual convergence problems that make screen work exhausting
Adults over 65, anyone on a blood thinner, and people with a prior concussion history carry higher risk and warrant a lower threshold for going back to the doctor.
What do insurance companies do with a concussion claim?
They sort it by property damage first. Carriers run low-speed collisions through minor impact soft tissue protocols and severity-scoring software, and a claim with a repairable bumper and a normal CT tends to get valued as a sore-neck case regardless of what the client reports about cognition.
The two things that undermine these claims most often are both fixable. The first is a treatment gap: three weeks with no visits reads as recovery on paper, even when the real reason was that you could not tolerate the drive. The second is an unrepresented recorded statement in the first week, when clients routinely say they are “fine, just a headache” because concussion impairs insight into your own deficits.
Why does Attorney Dustin get involved early on head injuries?
Because concussion cases are built through documentation that has to happen while symptoms are active, and it cannot be recreated later. Attorney Dustin uses the early weeks to get a symptom journal started, secure referrals to neurology and vestibular therapy rather than leaving treatment to a primary care follow-up, obtain the work or school accommodation records that show real-world functional loss, and gather statements from the spouse or coworker who watched the personality change happen.
Where symptoms persist, the damages analysis shifts. Lost earning capacity for someone who can no longer sustain a cognitively demanding job frequently dwarfs the medical bills, and proving it takes a vocational expert working from documented, contemporaneous limitations.
How long do I have to bring a brain injury claim in California?
Two years from the injury date under Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1. If a public entity is involved, a government tort claim is due within six months under Government Code section 911.2. California’s delayed discovery rule can extend the personal injury deadline where the injury could not reasonably have been discovered sooner, but it is a poor plan and courts read it narrowly.
A concussion that a hospital called mild can still cost you a career. Get evaluated by someone who treats brain injury, keep going even when appointments feel pointless, and do not let a normal CT scan convince you nothing happened. Talk with Attorney Dustin before you give any statement to an insurance company about a head injury.